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This is ridiculously well trod ground, but Prey also wasn’t at all helped by Bethesda’s marketing.
They had what is probably the truest successor to System Shock 2 that’s been made on their hands and Bethesda made Arkane use the title of a 15 year old portal based shooter that had absolutely no relation to the game and didn’t do particularly well because they owned the IP.
The entire Bethesda-Arkane relationship has been pretty thoroughly mismanaged.
On a long enough timeline.
In reality, they lost to TSMC as much as anything. That’s the real meat of why this case was so important: AMD not being able to gain marketshare meant they couldn’t afford to reinvest into R&D. AMD falling behind in fab tech and having to spin off Global Foundries to stay afloat was a near-direct result of Intel’s anti-competitive moves back then.
That lag in process tech had ripple effects for years. AMD didn’t really start to gain serious marketshare until the one-two punch of Zen and Intel hitting a process wall (while TSMC kept moving).
I really enjoyed Weird West. It mashed up immersive sim elements with Divinity-inspired isometric sandbox combat. Lots of really cool world building.
Rough around the edges in a few places and probably a little ambitious in scope for the size of their team, but overall a pretty solid and fun title for a new indie studio.
tl;dr definitely interested in seeing what they do next.
Like how Ferrari cars are designed for 20 year olds but only 80 year olds can afford to buy them.
I mean, making the comparison to motorsports just emphasizes how cheap gaming is as a hobby.
Autocross is as entry level as you can get and a typical ~$50 entry fee gets you maybe 10 minutes of seat time and it’s typical to need to drive 2-3 hours each way for an event. That’s before you start adding in things like the fact that a $1500 set of tires will last you a season or two at most, suspension and brake upgrades easily running a couple of thousand dollars, etc.
Start dipping into actual track time and fees jump to more like $250-750 plus around that much again for track insurance per event. And the upgrades needed for the car to hold up on track are even more expensive still. And this is all ignoring the purchase price of the car and potentially needing to trailer a dedicated track car.
I’ve almost certainly spent far less on PC gaming in the last 5 years combined than I have on motorsports in the past 3 months. I’m on the upper end of spending for most gamers and a dabbler at best when it comes to the cars.
The insanity of the GPU market since covid has put some upward pressure on things but A. the proliferation of great indie titles means you can get incredible value without breaking bank on the highest end equipment and B. even then, the money I spent literally tonight ordering just brake pads and rotors would buy you a 4070 all day long. And I went cheaper than I could have.
Gaming dollars go a long, long way. It’s a hobby that was affordable even when I was younger and broke. It’s still relatively affordable compared to many, many other hobbies.
Free Stars is being made by the original creators of the series, Paul Reiche and Fred Ford. They had nothing to do with SC3 or Origins.
The reason why it’s not using the Star Control name is because the IP ownership around the whole thing is messy. The short version is that Paul and Fred owned the rights to the universe, but Atari owned the rights to the Star Control name.
When Atari went bankrupt, Stardock bought the name. They thought they’d bough the universe. This resulted in Stardock spending the next couple of years trying trying to use the courts to bully Paul and Fred into turning over the rights to them and generally being dickheads.
This finally ended in a settlement and work on Free Stars has been happening quietly for the last couple of years.
For 3D printers, they’re subpar.
Noctua fans are typically 12v and tuned for lower speed for lower noise; in 3DP you’re generally looking for 24v fans* with the highest CFM:static pressure ratio you can get which will generally mean a louder, higher RPM fan.
They’ll work, but you can generally get industrial fans from Delta, Sunon, etc that are a better fit for the application, often for less money.
* - 5v and 12v fans are getting more common simply because they tend to be more available. Preference for high CFM:static pressure holds true regardless.
lol and this is exactly why that decision was so baffling.
The game has absolutely nothing to do with the 3D Realms Prey game. It’s truer to System Shock than the Bioshock series ever was. It routinely goes on sale for next to nothing – highly recommended if you’re a fan of SS2.